From AVweb

The co-chairs of the House General Aviation Caucus are seeking supporters for their opposition to a bill that would expand the authority of the National Park Service to control aviation operations, EAA said last week. If the bill passes, it would grant authority to the Park Service director to regulate commercial air tours above the parks and within a half mile of park borders. U.S. Reps. Sam Graves, R-Mo., and John Barrow, D-Ga., are asking others in Congress to sign a letter that says this would be "a step backward in aviation safety and should be rejected." The two have asked aviators who are opposed to the change to contact their congressional representatives and ask them to sign on to the letter.

If the bill passes as proposed, it would "effectively eliminate the air tour industry," the letter (PDF) says. "The end result will be lost jobs for pilots, drivers, tour guides, support staff, and local businesses and adversely impact the helicopter manufacturing, maintenance, and parts industries." The proposed new rules also disregard the fact that the air tour industry is heavily investing in new technology that would provide quieter operations, the congressmen said.

Kind of related so I'll throw it out here. A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine was on an overnight in PHX. He said he made a call to the NPS to get permission to land inside the park on the north rim so that he can then have a CFI fly the plane to the other side to pick him up after he did a rim to rim night run. So, he called and on very short notice (minutes not hours), he has permission. So, a couple of questions come to mind:

How would one go about this? How is it that they will grant permission for something like this, but they can throw a fit over others landing inside the park, i.e. strips that are closed and won't reopen.

What would be an acceptable reason to get such permission?

For the Grand Canyon in particular, anyone know anything about the old strip that was on the north rim? I've tried to find it but can only find references to it. I can't seem to find it on Google Earth.

Just curious.

I don't have a horse in the race but I can see one scenario.
The previously mentioned situation comes to mind. You make the phone call to Ranger Bob at the local office as usual but no, now you have to call the newly created light aircraft desk (LAD) in Washington (9AM- 4PM Eastern time M-F but not on holidays) to get an initial approval code. But wait, there's more. You can only call after you fill out an internet form and pay the non-refundable $79.95 fee. We take credit cards. You then have to wait for the LAD to transmit said approval code to the Regional office for their approval then to the local office for their approval, normally a 2 working day procedure. Don't call us, the local office will email you with the final determination within 48 hours of their approval. Any step along the way you could get shot down (so to speak) with no recourse. Don't despair, the fee goes to pay for the 233 lads who got one of the newly created Federal jobs. Your tax dollars will cover the rest.
Pretty good plan....right?

Forgot, regarding North Rim airports, there are two here:

http://www.airfields-freeman.com/AZ/Airfields_AZ_N.htm

Back in October 1997 I was in Great Basin National Park Nevada. I was on a "guided walk" with ranger when someone asked him if it was legal for airplanes to fly low over the park because she had been "buzzed" by a plane earlier that day up on the glacier (I saw her being "buzzed" by the plane, he was at least 1000 ft. AGL). The park rangers answer was that the park service doesn't allow planes to fly anywhere over the park at less tahn 2000 feet, and if they can read the numbers off of a plane they report it to the FAA. I have no idea how they were trying to enforce this regulation at the time, or if he was just trying to pacify one of the visitors with a load of BS.

Dale Moul wrote:and if they can read the numbers off of a plane they report it to the FAA.

People can't judge altitude very well. I can't even do it well enough to tell if a someone is 2000' or 3000', or 1000' or 1500' at a glance reliably, to be honest.

I got 'turned in' on a tip when I was in high school. The FAA wanted to take my ticket. The person didn't get a tail number, they simply gave my name. It went away when after a fairly long period of time the FAA finally got the person to indicate the plane had two engines. I wasn't even in town when the incident allegedly occurred, and I had a Pacer.

The NPS won't be able to determine what altitude a person is flying at with accuracy either. Neither will the folks at the NWR's in Oregon that are the source of controversy recently.

I will say that I have spent a lot of time in National parks and a bunch of time on the river in the grand canyon (70+ days on the river down there). Having designated flight routes is really nice for the visitors in the park -- limits the noise. I love aviation noise just as much as every other pilot, but having it regulated in the NPS is a good thing. I also happen to be a concessionaire on the public lands across the country and its how I make a living. Maybe there is an option to have concessionaire air tours -- limited permits to those existing as we do for the land based.

2000' is watched around here in Moab, UT pretty heavily

I don't make a living off working in NP. I like to fly. I don't want any restrictions where I can fly. I know that is not a real expectation.

But, I have a dream, that one day the people who want my freedom will drop dead.

G'Day

OregonMaule wrote:I don't make a living off working in NP. I like to fly. I don't want any restrictions where I can fly. I know that is not a real expectation.

But, I have a dream, that one day the people who want my freedom will drop dead.

G'Day

Freedoms for opinion is a great thing!

GrassStrip:

Bar 10 and Tuweep are both on the north rim. Bar 10 is used frequently by rafter flights. Tuweep is "officially" closed but the runway might be usable. A friend reported that it had been bladed within the last year or so. Look for L50 on the Grand Canyon VFR chart.

YB

The NPS doesn't administer very well at ground level so how are they going to administer in the air??

As a lifetime, frequent wilderness adventurer, backpacker, climber, I have never found airplanes disturbing. They mostly just pass by with nothing but a short interruption to the natural quiet, and no other impact whatsoever. Most of the time my friends don't even notice, not even the liberal vegan hippie environmentalist or the NPS ranger I often backpack with. I see no need to regulate private aircraft any further here. It is just not a problem. The NPS does not need to satisfy the few noisy whiners by trying to regulate something they do not understand.

Having ANOTHER federal agency with little or no knowledge of aircraft adding flight restrictions as THEY see fit? THAT is a problem.

I vote NO.

(btw, my wilderness playground is mostly the Sierra Nevada and coastal ranges of California, with occasional forays into the mountains of Colorado and New Mexico and the Grand Canyon.)

If it's later in the day, I often fly lower than the road traffic on Trail Ridge Road in RMNP, since I can't get any higher due to density altitude. It would be pretty near impossible if some Ranger Rick with his excessively weighted badge were to be trying to get my tail number to turn me in--yet another reason to have 3" tail numbers!

But as a general proposition, I think it's a huge mistake for any agency other than the FAA to have the authority to regulate aviation. Sometimes it's a mistake to allow the FAA to regulate aviation!

Cary

Yellowbelly wrote:GrassStrip:

Bar 10 and Tuweep are both on the north rim. Bar 10 is used frequently by rafter flights. Tuweep is "officially" closed but the runway might be usable. A friend reported that it had been bladed within the last year or so. Look for L50 on the Grand Canyon VFR chart.

YB

Those two were my first thoughts, but he turned his tracking on as he started his run and it was very near to the North Rim lookout...a long ways from those two strips. That's why I was curious where he landed.

c170pete wrote:As a lifetime, frequent wilderness adventurer, backpacker, climber, I have never found airplanes disturbing.

Me too, but it's not really the problem as I see it.

I simply do not think people can judge whether a person is at 1500' or 2000' from the ground looking up.

I cannot do it. It is obvious that I am not alone in this, as much as some people claim they can. In fact, once I'm above about a thousand feet up, my ability to judge AGL from sight falls off quickly, even as a pilot. I have to derive what it is with a map and an altimeter.

I cannot imagine a random person, or even a sharp NPS ranger, could reliably discriminate 1500' from 2000' AGL against a big blue sky without practice and geographic references. If a guy's pilot license or a $5k is on the line, along with legal bills, it looks like a train wreck.

In general, I don't see the point of going lower than the *requested* 2000' clearance unless DA or safety get in the way. Even though I couldn't care less about the noise, there are plenty of people who do, and there is a big difference between 1000' and 2000' for those folks. I'm happy to take the extra 2 minutes to fly over or around the area.

If airspace enforcement becomes mandatory from other branches of government than the FAA, then expect even more arbitrary or capricious enforcement too. They go hand in hand. Pretty soon it will mean even municipalities exercising local control, and it will go from there.

Grassstrippilot wrote:

Yellowbelly wrote:GrassStrip:

Bar 10 and Tuweep are both on the north rim. Bar 10 is used frequently by rafter flights. Tuweep is "officially" closed but the runway might be usable. A friend reported that it had been bladed within the last year or so. Look for L50 on the Grand Canyon VFR chart.

YB

Those two were my first thoughts, but he turned his tracking on as he started his run and it was very near to the North Rim lookout...a long ways from those two strips. That's why I was curious where he landed.

VT Ranch is the closest airstrip I know of to the N. Rim Look out. I always thought it was on Forest Sevice Land. I have never been to the strip, but imagine it would only be useable by Tundra Tire Acft.
36° 23' 25"N, 112° 7' 52"
http://www.airfields-freeman.com/AZ/Air ... andcanyonn

It would be great to have a small airstrip right on the N. Rim. Good for bringing in visitors, good for park service ops also, considering the isolated nature of the N. Rim.

This is from my friends blog. Also a picture of his mapped trail, which I'm sure he started as soon as he left the plane.

"After landing in Phoenix in the evening I caught a ride over to Falcon Field to pick up the small plane I was flying to the canyon. I roughly figured I’d land at the Grand Canyon Airport on the South Rim and take the courtesy car to the trailhead and catch the first Rim Shuttle back in the morning. As I was loading gear in the plane one of the instructors asked where I was going and after explaining it all, he was totally into it. So I asked him to come along and drop me off at the North Rim, camp the night, and pick me up at the South Rim. It would be the perfect scenario. I was surprised when he was stoked to do it, as long as he could log the flight hours and if I would buy him breakfast! This changed everything and I went back inside and pulled out the maps and called the NPS for a clearance into the canyons CFR airspace since we would be heading to the North Rim. This can take days, so it was unusual to get everything done in an hour, one more good thing about doing this in the spring. We loaded up and headed for the canyon. We came around the North edge where it looked like there was a great landing spot just a mile or so from the trailhead. I hopped out and within a couple of minutes he was gone and I was standing there alone. It felt a bit sudden and could I say nervous? Pretty dark night and I’ve only done a few night long trail runs, nothing this remote. It actually took some time to convince myself that this was no longer than any other distance run I do any time of the year."

As soon as the NPS gets control, we can fully expect the BLM and USFWS, and USFS to petition likewise. Especially the Fish and Wildlife refuges.....